I was very pleasantly surprised to see R. Elisabeth Cornwell’s articles The Evolution of Religion and Why Women Are Bound to Religion: An Evolutionary Perspective in these pages recently. Could Suicide Girls become a journal of serious discourse on religious matters? Incredible. And to think there are a bunch of “Buddhists” out there who say I shouldn’t be writing here.
You canÂ’t argue with CornwellÂ’s thesis in her latest piece that women have generally been extremely poorly treated by religion and yet continue nonetheless to propagate the very beliefs responsible for their often sorry position in society. You hear a lot of talk about primitive matriarchal religions that treated women well. But most of those religions are so ancient and so thoroughly dead that what we can say about them is mainly conjecture. The powerful patriarchal religions of the modern world have mostly treated women like shit.
Except for Buddhism.
You knew IÂ’d say that, didnÂ’t you? But it happens to be true. Historically Buddhism has been much better to women than any of the other major religions*. To be sure, there are examples of times when certain Buddhists have treated women just as badly as any other religion. But in doing so these Buddhists have gone against the explicit directions of the founder of their faith.
Buddha’s first order of monks was an all-boys club with a big “No Girls Allowed” sign on the door. But there was a group of women, including Buddha’s step-mom (his mom had died giving birth to him and he was raised by an aunt) and the wife he ditched when he first went on his quest for the truth**, who hung out with the monks, listened to Buddha’s lectures and practiced the meditation he taught. One day Buddha’s step-mom went to Buddha on behalf of these women and asked that they be admitted to the order. Buddha said, “Forget it.”
But a little while later, Buddha’s right hand man Ananda asked Buddha, “Are women less intelligent than men?” Buddha said no, women were just as intelligent as men. Ananda said, “Are women less capable of reaching enlightenment than men?” Buddha said no, women were just as capable as men of reaching enlightenment. Having thus backed him into a corner Ananda went for the kill and asked, “Then why don’t you admit them into the order?”
Buddha had to admit that his initial decision had been wrong. So he opened the order to women. But he was a realist. He knew India in his time was a male-dominated society and would look very much askance at a religious order that admitted women. Plenty of people were already bitching at him for a lot of the radical stuff heÂ’d done. So he made up a list of rules women had to follow that were much stricter than the ones men had to observe and he separated the boys from the girls into different monasteries. He also predicted the order would eventually fail because of this decision. He was wrong there.
Once Buddha was dead, though, less sexually liberated men took control of the order. After a while some male monks developed a stupidly superior attitude that led a lot of them to take ridiculous vows such as that they would never touch a woman or speak to one, some even vowed never to so much as look at a woman. The founder of the Buddhist order in which I was ordained, Dogen Zenji, called bullshit on that.
Dogen wrote a piece called “Prostrating to The Attainment of the Marrow” (Raihai Tokuzui in Japanese). You can read it in volume one of his masterwork, Shobogenzo.
Dogen says, “nowadays (nowadays, in this case, being the year 1240) extremely stupid people look at women without having corrected the prejudice that women are objects of sexual greed. Disciples of the Buddha must not be like this. If whatever may become the object of sexual greed is to be hated, do not all men deserve to be hated too? As regards the causes and conditions of becoming tainted, a man can be the object, a woman can be the object, what is neither man nor woman can be the object, and dreams and fantasies, flowers in space, can also be the object. There have been impure acts done with a reflection on water as an object, and there have been impure acts done with the sun in the sky as an object.”
I can vouch for that last bit. I used to work in a group home for mentally handicapped adults. We had one guy there who had a thing for shoes. You didn’t dare take yours off when he was around lest you find a sticky present inside when you put them back on! Dogen says, “if we hate whatever might become the object of sexual greed, all men and women will hate each other, and we will never have any chance to attain salvation.”
I always think of this when I hear people talking about the supposedly great virtue in the way some religions force women to cover their bodies lest men become sexually greedy. If we follow that logic then an oil magnate who owns a flashy Cadillac ought to drive around with it covered in a burlap sack to keep those who canÂ’t afford such cars from suffering the sin of envy. WeÂ’ve all got our own specific objects of greed and itÂ’s up to us to deal with that ourselves. ItÂ’s not up to other people to shield us from temptation.
Dogen goes on to say, “Even in China, there was a stupid monk who made the following vow: ‘Through every life, in every age, I shall never look at a woman.’ Upon what morality is this vow based? What wrong is there in a woman? What virtue is there in a man? Among bad people there are men who are bad people. Among good people there are women who are good people.”
He cites numerous famous female Buddhist masters whose understanding far surpassed most men, saying that a guy who took a vow like this would never get a chance to learn from them. He then derides the then-current Japanese custom of not allowing women to visit certain temples.
To get back to what Cornwell wrote, in her article on women and religion she says, “In order for women to abandon religion and its securities, there needs to be something tangible to replace the support that it offers.” This is truer than I think even she realizes.
One of the greatest marks of Buddha as a real man of genius was that he didnÂ’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. He realized religion and spirituality were pretty fucked up. But he also understood the very important role they play in human society. As Cornwell points out in her article on the evolution of religion, religion serves a need much, much deeper than anything the intellect can ever hope to reach.
This is why atheism, as rational and sensible as it is, will never be an adequate substitute for religion. ItÂ’s like trying to substitute actual eating with a superbly argued essay on food. ItÂ’s an intellect-based solution for a problem that has nothing at all to do with the intellect.
Buddhism did away with deities and belief systems, but did not do away with ritual and practice. Buddhist temples, though they aren’t strictly speaking “religious temples,”*** look like religious temples and the things you do in Buddhist temples seem like the same things you do in religious temples. You chant, you prostrate yourself in front of statues, there are people in funny clothes inside, there are rules to be followed, there is a community of fellow adherents, and all the rest. Thus the deep need we all feel to belong to that kind of an institution is satisfied. Yet there is no pretense that some big guy with a beard who lives up in the sky will smite you if you fail to do these things or reward you if you get all the steps just right. It’s all up to you.
I know I sound like a shill for Buddhism here. But IÂ’m not really interested in converting anyone. If you can find another philosophy that does all these things, by all means go for it. Or if BuddhismÂ’s just not for you, thatÂ’s fine too. No skin off my ass either way.
Although technically I am a Buddhist monk, I’m also a bit of a reluctant Buddhist. I’m a Buddhist because I have to admit that Buddhism really is the best thing on offer. I tried the rest and went with the best. But I don’t really self-identify as “a Buddhist” unless I’m specifically called upon to do so (such as when I’m asked to write a column about Buddhism for a pin-up website).
Still, I think in its attitude towards women and in its immensely practical attitude towards religion itself, Buddhism hasnÂ’t been bested yet. Maybe someday. But not yet.
*Actually I donÂ’t consider Buddhism to be a religion at all. But for the purposes of this article IÂ’m treating it as one. ItÂ’s not a religion in the sense that it doesnÂ’t have a deity and it isnÂ’t based on spirituality. It is a religion in terms of its age, its function in society and its number of adherents. This subject is much too deep to get into in a footnote, though!
**Yes it's true, Buddha left his wife. But he didn't exactly dump her in a roach infested tenement with four screaming babies. Buddha was a prince at the time and knew his wife would be very well cared for when he was gone. There was a tradition in India of householders leaving home on spiritual quests and there were, and still are, customs and legal regulations in place to deal with such cases. And please note that later on his wife too entered the Buddhist order. Again, this is way too big for a footnote!
***See first footnote.
For further reading check out this page on the history of women in Buddhism.
"This is why atheism, as rational and sensible as it is, will never be an adequate substitute for religion. It’s like trying to substitute actual eating with a superbly argued essay on food. It’s an intellect-based solution for a problem that has nothing at all to do with the intellect."
I was enjoying this article up until this strange, out of place and misguided paragraph. You argue throughout this article for the power of ritual and practice yet these statements assume that atheists, with their single tenet (funny, right?) of lack of belief in a deity (something you even admit as being absent from Buddhism), have somehow stated a lack of belief in ritual and practice. Religions are multi-faceted systems that combine ritual, practice, faith and many other things that fulfill the subconscious (read that as "emotional" if you would like) needs of many, if not most, human beings. In no way does atheism denounce ritual and practice, nor does it even denounce the concept of faith. (Every human being puts some amount of faith in authority of some sort but I will not get into that here). Atheism is merely the rejection of belief in the existence of a deity (strong atheism) or simply the absence of said belief (weak atheism). You, as a Buddhist, should fully understand the difference between religion, ritual, practice and belief in a deity or deities. If you had used the word "antireligion"* instead of "atheism" then you might have made a worthwhile statement. Instead, you merely ended up misrepresenting atheism.
Sam Harris, a noted atheist writer and religious critic, is a good example of an atheist who understands the difference between belief in God or other deities and ritual and practice. He is very much interested in altering human consciousness through practice, especially meditation. While I disagree with Sam on many things, mostly about the importance of culture and its influence on human behavior, he is an adequate model of the boundaries of the term "atheist" and is fully right to separate his lack of belief from ritual and practice. Certainly, one can both understand why rituals and practices are important to human psychology, sans deity, and still partake of them and be fulfilled by them.**
*I think the term "antireligion" is even a bit off the mark entirely because of the existence of non-religious rituals and practices but it is still the closest you could have come.
**Anthropologists and psychologists do agree that most rituals are bolstered by belief in the presence of a particular, metaphyiscal "something" but that it need not be a deity.
Nice article, as always. I should like to point out that the Christian faiths are also not acting in compliance with the teachings of their ostensible Prophet (or Saviour), even within the narrow confines of those teachings accepted by the conservative clergy of the RC and EO church hierarchies.
I find the argument that the power of ritual and practice alone---in spite of, or despite, an absence of faith in the object of the ritual---suffices to form a fundemental association, a religion of sorts, to be rather like the Atheist and the dinner plate; it sounds right, it makes sense, but it doesn't stand up to actuality. Not too many Western Catholics believe that wine and bread are transubstantiated by the invocation of the Holy Apirit in the Sacrament of Holy Communion; they nevertheless believe they are partaking of a Sacrament---a ritual, if you will---that connects them directly to the Holy Spirit and to Jesus Christ, because the (faith) facts of Jesus' wish to "do this in remembrance of Me" are an unassailable tenet of Christianity.
Without some degree of faith in the connection to Jesus Christ---whose life and teachings, at a minimum, are integral to all Christianity---the Sacrament is meaningless, and the gesture fills no spiritual need, though it may fill the need to conform and be accepted.
Also, it seems to me that, from the end of the Victorian era, Science has been overtaking Christianity as the fundamental belief system of most Western cultures. It is to Science that we look for answers, and it is Science and its facts we turn and twist to fit our own needs, and whose proclamations we grant considerable weight, almost without regard to the complexities and differences underlying the actual doing of science.
I think you're way off on Atheism. I have to ask why we need useless rituals and chanting and temples? We have plenty of art and music that's not based on religion or spirituality, so we don't need them for that. You have your family and friends to support you emotionaly, or a psychatrist if you can't talk to them, so we don't need religion for that. We have secular traditions and we can always make personal traditions. There are lots and lots of clubs where you can get together with like minded people. It seems to me people should learn that what they're craving can be experienced in secular life and they don't need religious fluff.
Brad_Warner
NEWSWIRE
Akron, OH
MAR 10, 2009 01:11 PM